Beyond Dying
by CyanGalaxy
Summary: While searching for her Master since his capture, Ahsoka realizes she's not as resilient or ready-for-anything as she once thought. She'd seen plenty or gore, witnessed brutal deaths, managed getting tortured herself a few times... but she was too innocent and young to fathom this (warnings inside, triggering for some).


**A/N: Warnings: unmentioned, but implied sexual violation; gore; mentioned of torture. This is truly a new level for me, even though it's only an implied topic.**

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One breath, and that's all the Padawan needed to know exactly what kinds of horrendous, torturous activity transpired here. She had a pretty good guess, already at least (she was not as stupid and young as many—Rex, Obi-Wan—may believe). And could clearly tell enough by the endlessly crimson stained walls, the several broken and bloody Sepritist torture devices, and the acidic smell of the darkly illuminated, disgustingly damp confinement cell, but there were things still unknown—things that she would _need_ to know in order to find Anakin and wherever the kriffing Seps managed to take him now.

So Ahsoka drew on the Force, inhaling, calming herself in preparation for what it might show her. She felt, rather saw Obi-Wan do that same thing beside her, even touching a shaking and white-knuckled hand to the wall for a better connection to the haunting cell and what it would offer to present to him. Despite his actions, she knew better and could tell we was _afraid—_ of what he might see, what he might _not_ see, or things left up for only the imaginative—and she couldn't honestly say she didn't feel the same eerie feeling. It didn't do anything to calm her own nerves and make the seemingly hole in her gut go away, but she was at least thankful that the older Jedi had strong mental shields in place to block her out. It made it easier to worry on only her own emotions over losing Anakin... It had to be almost five months ago now, but any thoughts of him still stung like a fresh wound.

Eventually, Ahsoka did the same as Obi-Wan, reaching a hand out to skim her fingers over a small section of the wall that was relatively clean. She knew by doing this, she would get a more powerful Force-vision of the past events in here (only a few weeks ago, from their sources) and feel everything to an extreme, but Ahsoka felt like if she didn't, she'd let Anakin down. Though she was scared and unprepared, she _needed_ to do this for him, experience only a fraction of the pain he felt for the greater good.

As soon as she touched it, the Force impacted with her much feebler mind and soul with so much energy and emotion combined, it felt like being smashed into a meteorite traveling at light speed that was also burning through space at an unimaginable degree of heat, with herself disintegrating into charred ash faster than she could process.

There were more agonized feelings in the air than she could comprehend, and surely not just Anakin's alone either. From what she could tell, more than twenty presences throughout the past haunted her vision in this disgustingly sick torture palace, where the few Jedi, clones or others alike were treated in such an inhuman manner it was chilling and sickening to envision, let alone experience first hand.

She counted maybe at least four beings' blood still tainting the walls and floor—and that was only the most recent captives (most of it was Anakin's). Their seemingly endless ceasing cries smothered her eardrums, Ahsoka hearing the words 'no', 'stop' and 'please' in various pleading languages more times than she could possibly remember. All those sounds were foreign to her ears, at least the Jedi ones, because she'd never known of a Jedi to beg before. Somewhere mixed within all the chaos were death wishes, prayers of mercy killing, and to listen to that made her blood run cold. She could swear on her life, Anakin's voice was among them.

The voices that were either too weak to shout or too damage to the point their vocal cords were ripped apart and destroyed simply groaned and grunted, silently wishing for the end, or to call upon the Force that was no longer accessible. She knew some of the prisoners were either gagged or... _shut up_ (the best way she felt she could describe)—hence the strange strangled gurgling noises.

...But voices weren't the only things. Many, many types of insidious instruments slashed through flesh, shattered bone, smashed teeth, twisted nails, punctured skin so violently the flesh would be completely mutilated and deformed. Vaguely, Ahsoka recognized hearing one of the devices that she saw before on the ground, though at the time, she didn't reconize it.

When her auditory sense decided it was at its breaking point, sensory overload, inability to process anything more, her sense of sight harshly kicked in, mocking her young mind saying _this is only the beginning, child_.

...And what she saw was indescribable. She could only feel her mouth become thick with ash, her legs weigh down like solid lead, and her eyeballs burn like they'd been dipped in fiery acid, because the scenes she were witnessing were too unimaginable, they hurt her being to bare witness.

The unclothed victims were completely unresponsive to the beatings or other tortuous pain inflicted upon them—she wasn't entirely convinced they weren't already dead if it wasn't for their inaudible sobs or heavy breaths. Some people that she didn't recognise as captives or Separatists would come into the cell various times, act like a source of comfort, but from the captives' faces, it was anything but. That's when the shouting started again, the moment the unknown figure lay a filthy, rough hand disguised as care down each prisoner's bare chest and legs and further.

At that point Ahsoka knew these people had been in this godforsaken place for months up until that moment, as they were too broken to fight for there own dignity, something deeper than wounds to the skin.

There was a sense of something so humiliatingly dehumanizing lingering within every wave-link through the Force. It was unstoppable, uncontrollable, unwanted and left the atmosphere broken when the pressure throughout the air was released.

She never knew a victim of torture could feel guilt before, there was no reason to. Especially since this heartbreakingly dense emotion was so strong and vivid she felt like throwing up or break down crying until whatever was happening was over. It must have been her unbreakable bond to Anakin, because she felt his engulfing shame and disgrace the strongest, something she'd never felt before. It wasn't as simple as he gave in and told the Seps information that would betray the Republic, but an unmerciful feeling that devoured him from the inside out, unleashed ever since the unidentifiable person came the first time.

 _I- I'm s-sorry Pa-...! I didn't want_... She distantly heard him cry through hot tears of unimaginable remorse.

His plea wasn't the only one. The other Republic captives' voices overlapped each other, some short and hoarse, others long and begging, but they all played on an infinite loop as if a holo-recorder was broken and stuck on an endless replay.

And through all the physical and mental trauma, Ahsoka didn't even realize her scream had joined in with all the others, a symphony of nothing but agony.

When the Padawan opened her eyes, the world had changed. Instead of being trapped inside that awful vision, she was simply in the cell that it took place in. It might have not seemed any different, but truthfully it was a huge relief to only see the aftermath of the cell, than envisioning everything from before.

Her senses told her that she was on the ground and she knew Obi-Wan was urging her to come back to reality. He shook her lightly, calling her name from above, and quickly the girl came to her senses and shuffled upright, more so with the intent of not wanting to lay in the putrid blood spatters.

"What was that?" She pressed, suddenly realizing instantly why she was on the ground in the first place. She knew Force visions were strong, but they shouldn't be like that. Plus, for something as powerful and vivid as that to occur, shouldn't she be able to understand it, at least? The crazy thing was, Ahsoka knew she saw things during the last part before her brain blacked out, but her mind couldn't follow or figure it out. "What did we see?"

Obi-Wan swallowed hard, suppressing something vile, she realized. He turned away, not looking at her... or anything really. His eyes closed, like the whole room disgusted him even more than before. She saw he was incredibly disturbed by everything here, and that was saying something because, rarely anything ever had shaken the Great Negotiator before.

She doubted he would answer, and hesitantly but defiantly went to question further, yet he opened his mouth to speak. "Many beings were killed here, Ahsoka... and worse."

She knew... he didn't have to say it. But, the other bit of the sentence confused her, because she'd never known of anything worse than death, anything more worse to fear. And surely Anakin wasn't dead. She felt him struggling to breathe, his warm blood spatter the walls, his internal pain that reeked of betrayal to... to a beloved, but he was alive. And what would be so torturous that one felt as if death was the better option? "I... I don't understand, Master."

However, Obi-Wan didn't say anything, only to send her uncertainty into a deep kind of dread that made the already dense Force aura deepen. Something so vile that the Jedi Master wouldn't mention made her more sickened than she'd like to admit. This wasn't just the ordinary torture any trained Force-sensitive could resist... Ahsoka knew that.

"Now is not the time, young one..."

And so she just stood in silence with the putrid blood stains on the walls, the smell of Force-knows-what violating her nostrils and the discarded filthily bloody tunics on the ground taunting her with something she knew she should realize, but either couldn't fathom or subconsciously think about at the moment.

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 **A/N**

 **Hmm... I mean, it's not as descriptive, nor vivid as fics with this topic can be, but for me, it's wait out of my zone in terms of writing... and the crazy thing is, sexual violation wasn't even mentioned, but it's so uncomfortable to write because it's what the story means/implies that bothers me.**

 **Anyway, feedback is cool. Bad/good i don't care x3**

 **May the Force be with you**

 **\- CyanGalaxy**


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